Intro Dump

File:Stunticons intro 3447.jpg

Robot roll call!

"Hi, Bob, glad you could make it. Look, here come Ted and Sarah and Sean and Drew and Dan and Erin. You already know Ron and Jeremy and Mary and Sue and Peter and Ben and Steve. Come sit down next to Ken and Eric and Lee, and then Jim and Frank and Maxwell and Fred can call the meeting to order."

A type of Info Dump specific to a large ensemble show, in which hordes of characters are introduced and immediately all referred to by name. They may be new characters, they may be old characters being reintroduced after a break, but they're all standing in a line and they're all perfectly happy to say their own names.

Intro Dump is a cross between Dramatis Personae and Everyone Meets Everyone in the middle of a scene. It's different than Avengers Assemble because everyone is already in one place. Sometimes each character will say their own name during a Training Montage. Other times, the head of their Cast Herd segment will call everyone by name - and always by the order they're already standing in.

May be called as a sub-process during the bridge of an Expository Theme Tune. Also see Product Promotion Parade.

Examples of Intro Dump include:

Anime And Manga

• This happens in Negima in the form of Negi's class register, including the class' clubs and special notes on certain students. The new teacher himself wonders how he'll remember all this (he figures it out by the next volume)
  • Only natural considering that he's a 10 year old genius who mastered Japanese in only 3 weeks.
  • And thankfully afterwards the series then introduces the class the normal way.
• The first episode of the second season of ~Queen's Blade~ has Nanael looking through her magical book and listing off every major character from the first season to quickly get the audience back up to speed.
• This is parodied in episode 17 of Seto no Hanayome when a group of 8 gang leaders are introducing themselves to Akeno. After the third one, a card pops up explaining that they're just going to skip right to the last one.
• Banner of the Stars: The intro shows pictures of the various military commanders involved in the campaign, along with their name, rank, title, and fleet commanded
• In episode 7 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann when Kamina and Simon meet their soon to be allies.
• At the end of the English opening of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: Galactic Battles, there is a scene dedicated to Ash's party Pokémon (of the time) suddenly shouting out their names. Later on, starting with the episode "The Lonely Snover!", said Introdump is removed in favor of a revised, updated opening that includes scenes from the Japanese openings of "High Touch!" and "Pillars of Friendship!".

Comic Books

• G.I. Joe was particularly fond of this one, in both the comics and cartoons.
• Transformers did this quite blatantly (and quite often) in the Marvel comics, almost always as part of a Product Promotion Parade.
  • Not to mention the live action movie, where the Decepticons perform a roll-call for Megatron across America, and the scene in "exposition alley" where Prime introduces the other Autobots to Sam and Mikaela.
• X-Men comics usually averted this only by spreading it around: Chris Claremont used Talking Is a Free Action to have everyone announce who they were and what they could do - just not all at once.
  • Ultimate X-Men, however, is not so successful. They do intro dump with every other sentence, to the point where is becomes crossed with Department of Redundancy Department. It is just that bad.
• Elf Quest does this in the first issue; while the characters are in different areas, they're all called with "sending" (telepathy) and drawn in a single panel, each with their name. The only ones absent are the chief who calls them and the few characters who'd been introduced in the Universe.

Fanfiction

• Generally inevitably in stories taking place in other time-periods than the source material. A Harry Potter fic about his father's time at Hogwarts for example requires a lot of new characters (students and teachers) to fill the world. Inexperienced authors also often introduce too many original characters at once.

Film

• In The Sound of Music, Captain Von Trapp has trained his children to march around and Intro Dump themselves at the sound of a whistle: "Liesl! Friedrich! Louisa! Kurt! Brigitta! Marta! Gretel!"
• The opening credits of The Dirty Dozen has a roll call of all the "Dozen" as they stand before Major Reissman(Lee Marvin). An MP reads each members name and his prison sentence while his face is in closeup.
• Serenity has a particularly elegant one to reintroduce the cast aboard the ship.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I does this in the second scene in an info dump meant to cover plot holes left by the previous movies; Bill Weasley in particular manages to claw his way out of the memory hole.

Live Action TV

• The title sequence to Power Rangers Samurai includes the Rangers shouting out their names. (Depending on the season, both Power Rangers and Super Sentai involve large amounts of name-shouting through In the Name of the Moon and Transformation Name Announcement, but these aren't really for the purpose of introducing anyone.)
• Zoom's theme song is always one of these, dumping both the names of the revolving door cast and the show's mailing address.
• Cambot! Gypsy! Tom Servo! Crooooooooooooooow!
• "Hello, Bruce!"
• Mouseketeer Roll Call!
• The Gen2 opener of Skins does this twice in the same episode; first when everybody is allocated their classes in the gym hall, and then during the name-and-something-about-yourself bit in Sociology class.
• Viper did this quite often, where a character would explain in length something mundane the other characters already knew, just to 'expose' it to the audience. It was often just awkward.

Literature

• The Babysitters Club does this in the beginning of each book, to the point where the first two chapters are completely formulaic- the first chapter will establish the main character and the plot, the second chapter will be a club meeting and will describe each character. It's easy to just skip the first two chapters and still comprehend what's going on.
• Ditto with Animorphs. In fact, most serial Scholastic books probably begin with an introdump.
• In Chapter 3 of Nine Princes in Amber, the amnesiac main character stumbles onto a deck of cards bearing the images of his 12 living siblings. This simultaneously jogs his memory and serves to allow the author to name each sibling, physically describe them, and tell the reader what the protagonist thinks about them.
• After the second book in the House of Night series, this happens in every book. Usually with the same stock descriptors, such as describing Jack and Damien as gay, describing Erin and Shaunee being exactly alike except for their race, describing Zoey's best friend Stevie Rae, and in later books, describing Aphrodite.

Theatre

• The first third of the musical Starlight Express is one giant Intro Dump, where each of the 20+ characters gets at least a verse to introduce themselves.
• In the original production of Starmites, the titular band of heroes had four members aside from their leader, and they briefly introduced themselves to AscendedFangirl Eleanor in their We Are Song. Four names, each followed by "At your service, miss!" isn't so bad and is a pretty concise introduction, but subsequent youth theater productions have expanded the mites' ranks to sometimes as many as twenty kids. And they all say their names in the song. Every. Last. One of them.
• The song "Jacob & Sons" in Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (originally the opening number) introduces all 12 sons by name.
  • An early song idea for Jesus Christ Superstar would have done the same with the 12 Apostles.
• "It Sucks to Be Me" introduces the residents of Avenue Q along with their various grievances.

Web Comic

• Sluggy Freelance plays it straight up in this comic where the main character is dumped in a magic school against his will. http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=050828
• Last Res0rt doesn't do this immediately... until the titular Reality Show's Series Premiere, which introduces all the players in short order. Mostly justified in that, well, it's what Reality Shows DO, even if we already know a few of the players that were introduced earlier.
• This page of Murder She Writes.

Western Animation

• The Futurama movie Bender's Big Score begins with a role call of the main cast - just in case viewers forgot who was who in the years since the show went off the air, or for the benefit of some poor schlub who bought the DVD without seeing the show first.
• In Superfriends, Lex Luthor would frequently introdump the Legion of Doom. This was memorably parodied in a Cartoon Network commercial.
• The Backyardigans has an expository opening song which begins with the five main characters introducing themselves.
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! had an Intro Dump during its opening sequence as well, with the six members of the titular Hyperforce (if Chiro counts as one) shouting out their names.
• The first episode of Metalocalypse quotes the not-very Expository Theme Tune: "Gentlemen: Skwisgar Skwigelf, taller than a tree. Toki Wartooth, not a bumblebee. William Murderface Murderface Murderface.Pickles the Drummer, doodeley-doo, ding-dong, doodeley-doodeley-doo. Nathan Explosion. I'm afraid that's all we know, gentlemen."
• Transformers, as pictured above. Heck, their wiki has a page just for this.
  • Any episode of the Transformers Generation 1 cartoon introducing a new subgroup will have a scene where all of them gets a line or two and says their name (such as "Heavy Metal War" where Scrapper feels the need to call out all the Constructicons instead of just saying "We're all here.")
  • Beast Wars opening 2 parter has LOTS of this. First the Maximals picking their own new names (Based off their beast modes). Every transformation sequence in the two parter is also this, with a character being zoomed upon, saying his name and activation code as he transforms.
  • Transformers Animated has a scene in the first episode where most of the Decepticons are named and show off their personalities.
  • Transformers Robots in Disguise does this in "Battle Protocol!" while the Autobot Brothers are responding to Optimus Prime.
  • The opening sequence to every episode of Transformers Cybertron has Optimus Prime announce six Autobots' names.
• Parodied in the Simpsons episode The Twisted World of Marge Simpson. Cletus buys 300 pretzels to feed his children, and then proceeds to call them all out of the house by name... all twenty-six of them. And then they're never mentioned again.